Many in central Alberta had their eyes glued to the sky east of Lacombe last night (Oct 25th), many took to social media, others called 911 with concern there was a large fire.

That orange glow was the result of some high volume flaring at NOVA's Joffre Site.

Site Leader Rick Van Hemmen says shortly before midnight one of their major compressors tripped offline.

“A trip is really when an automated control system takes the unit down and that resulted in an unplanned shutdown, and this is our ethylene 2 plant that came down. So our operations team responded as usual ensured the unit was shut down safely. As a lot of our community members know, part of the shutdown activities we go to the flare system really to safely deal with the processed gases as we’re bringing the equipment down”.

He stresses their operations team mobilized without a hitch.

“We didn’t have any need for emergency services, the shutdown was well controlled, no injuries at all. I know there was some speculation from offsite, whether or not we had any emergencies going on at the site, but definitely not, no equipment damaged no injuries. But the trip resulted in a large amount of flaring and of course noise related to the flaring and last night because of the night time and low cloud conditions the flare glow was actually particularly noticeable in the community and we are certainly sorry for any impact we’ve had on our surrounding neighbours”.

Van Hemmen says the additional flaring did not have any environmental impact.

There will likely be more high volume flaring when NOVA brings the plant back up, which could happen later today depending on their investigation.